Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Neat Nails

 Thank you for joining me yet again for the A to Z Blogging Challenge! Today's post is for the letter N, for Neat Nails!
 There is a lot of paint in my home. A LOT. Acrylic paint, glitter paint, miniature paint, oh and paint for nails - nail polish! You might say I collect it. Some of these paints I've had longer than I've known my husband, and most of them still work well.
 I love painting my nails, it's a special bit of me time that I can then show off for a few days (no matter what I try, nail polish usually chips in 2-3 days!) Glitter is a lot of fun, above are some of my newer glitters - purple and green!
 Nail art is a lot of fun! These were both summer nail designs. The yellow suns I made with a small paint brush in yellow nail polish, the black happy faces I used a nail art pen for.
 These flowers were inspired by A Mom In Red High Heels' nail art post, I couldn't help myself!

 I wasn't super happy with my first flowers, so I decided to try it again, to match one of my favorite shirts.
  Can you tell I like green? This was a work of many layers - green, glow in the dark green, black crackle, then silver glitter on top. They glowed between the cracks, it was pretty neat! An idea for Halloween. But I couldn't get a good photo of them glowing.
  Something new came out in the last two years - magnetic nail polish! It's very time consuming, because you can only paint one nail at a time. Paint, place magnet over, wait for design to appear, check, repeat 9 times! But it looks really neat, and is fun to mix colors side by side in.

You can get different magnets too, currently I think I have seven or more colors, and five different magnet designs.

 The idea below I got from an exclusively nail art blog, the idea is Lisa Frank, with a rainbow of colors under black crackle. I wasn't very happy with how mine looked, it was more 80s fashion than I'm a fan of. Lighter colors might have worked better, or different color combinations (most of the nails had three colors)
 I had more fun with glitter above, for the Fourth of July week.

You might notice some of these pictures are better than others - I used to photograph a nail design right away, now I wait till the next day after I've cleaned off the smudges around my fingers. But I can't go back and fix the old photos without re-creating those designs, and there's always something new to try! =)

Below is some more fun nail art! I have a black, a white, and a pink nail art pen, but the black is bleeding a lot and the white is almost dry... I wonder why!
Stars and stripes - always a classic!
 I'd like to try stenciling or stamping, but haven't gotten into it yet. I did try some uv-free gel nail polish and that did NOT end well. So back to traditional polish for now - not like I have a lack of options! I wonder how I'll paint my nails next? Maybe with letters for the A to Z Challenge!

My daughter already loves nail polish too - and she wants the same flowers I put on mine, and always glitter on top!
 Do you have a favorite nail polish or design, or technique? Share in the comments!
I hope you enjoyed another insight into my fun creations and collections! Join me again tomorrow for something that starts with O!

3 comments:

  1. Gosh I wish I had your talent for painting nails. I really suck at this!

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    1. Start with something simple like stripes! The stamps and stencils are supposed to make it easier, I just tend to do things on my own =) And magnetic nail polish is great! You just have to paint the polish on, then hold the magnet over it, and voila! Design on your nail!

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    2. I'm curious about the magnetic ones. Maybe I'll give it a try sometime. :)

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